June 7, 2020-Something is Happening

Credit to Stephan Stills

We’ve had a little bit of southerly in the weather these last few days.

Never mind, it was expected and we’re in the perfect anchorage for it, tucked under the bluffs behind a nice high point of land where the water is smooth and the holding good.

Let the South wind blow.

Let it blow, let it blow, let it blow.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Quiet Spot in a Storm

We’re happy here.

Then the engine spit the dummy.

During our afternoon hour of battery charging, it's time we stop, but, hey, what's that sound?

There's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear.

The alarm’s a chirping then a solid whistle. Low lube oil pressure! Not exactly a man with a gun, but not something we want to hear. We shut it down.

OK, let’s look what's going down: The oil pressure on the gauge is fine, but the low pressure alarm is going off.

“Paranoia strikes deep”. We’d better head for home, with our tail between our legs if need be. We could stay, but “nobody's right if everybody's wrong”. If the engine blows up, well hell, it’s gone.

So we’re coming home, in fact we got there, nice sail today.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Wings in La Cruz Marina

But meanwhile, in the real world, far outside our little cove and our itsy bitsy little engine problem Stephen Stills’ song comes to mind, there really are battle lines being drawn. “Young people speaking their minds”, hell, old people too, a thousand people in the street, (and some which fell down) crying “enough” and “I can’t breath” and carrying signs, mostly they say, “it's time we stop”, hey, what's that sound, the sound of police boots hitting the ground. Into your life it will creep, (if you’re black). It starts when you're always afraid and they must be, because there really is a man with a gun over there, tellin' them they got to beware. And meanwhile, from the big house they’re gettin' so much resistance from behind. Fuck that man.

There are some years when the emotions rise, when so many feel the pain that they must express themselves. This year it’s the Covid, the economy, and most of all, the killings. So people take to the streets. It happened in before, in 1971. Stephen Stills was there too, with Neil Young, four dead in Ohio. But the oppression has been there for years, decades, maybe a couple of century’s or more, but it is time to stop, and maybe this is the tipping point. We hope so.

We’ve been here in our own quarantine. We are not really going to get caught up in it all, we can’t. But the world is changing, we can see it, maybe from afar, and some people know something is happening and maybe they don’t know what it is, but they will.

Click for more photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz